


and help them learn your name

by captainangua



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Apocalypse, Amnesiac Dean Winchester, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Angst with a Happy Ending, Enemies to Lovers, Flashbacks, Friends to Enemies, Getting Back Together, M/M, Memory Loss, Monster Dean Winchester, Monsters, Mutual Pining, Mystery, POV Castiel, POV Sam Winchester, Post-Break Up, Rescue Missions
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-01-20
Updated: 2019-05-01
Packaged: 2019-10-13 10:52:23
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 8,305
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17486777
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/captainangua/pseuds/captainangua
Summary: The world as it had been is gone, but Sam doesn't consider that his job to fix. Currently, he has bigger, more personal, problems.Drawn out of the safety of his fortified compound he's made his home into the monster-infested wastelands beyond, Sam has one goal: to find his missing brother, or to find out what happened to him.His co-searcher, Cas, who has reasons of his own to be desperately seeking the same answers as Sam, may hold the key to discovering at least why Dean left in the first place.But as their search brings them to unexpected places, neither of them are ready for what they find.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [CoralQueen](https://archiveofourown.org/users/CoralQueen/gifts).



> avoiding editing work other places, and got some amazing lovely prompts in, so this is happening.
> 
> do i have a thing for strange apocalyptic circumstances and everyone doing an unnecessary amount of threatening each other?? Probably??

Though he’d never liked mornings and he awoke feeling cold, with his limbs stiff; Sam still felt more alive, more hopeful about the day ahead than he had in years.

He could function through and force himself into mornings far better than most of the team joining him though, proved yet again by the lack of figures he could see moving. Feeling impatient, Sam got himself out of his sleeping sack and to his feet and looked up at the sun sluggishly starting to rise up through the misty, hazy sky, lighting up the bleak wastelands beneath.

As a teenager, Sam had devoured whole libraries worth of apocalyptic fiction. He’d enjoyed the thought exercise of what humanity might start to look like after all its known structures and habitats were destroyed, he’d enjoyed the appearance of monsters, something to draw them all back together again.

He could have done without the live experience.

Just one other figure was up, crouched over a small travel cafetiere. Smiling grimly and shaking his head at the sight, Sam walked over to join them, glad that coffee was one of the few luxuries that the compound hadn’t yet run out of. They hadn’t planned for the apocalypse, not the way it arrived. By the time any order had been established in their particular fortress town, all the supermarkets and grocery stores had long since been looted, but not many had bothered taking anything from Starbucks but its most immediate perishables.

So, yeah. Coffee was still around, but it didn’t come easy, you didn’t see it often.

So of course Sam’s mysterious benefactor had brought a stash with him.

“Didn’t think it was your turn on watch, Cas,” Sam pointed out as he took a seat across from the biologist on one of the logs they’d dragged over to their fire the night before.

“Charlie needed her rest,” Cas explained, not looking up from his coffee press as though he were afraid it would do something dangerous if he stopped.

“And you didn’t?”

Cas smiled slightly, but Sam had learned in the months they’d spent planning for and leading this expedition together that this was as positive a reaction as could ever likely be expected from him. He was taciturn, to say the least.

“You know, Cas…” Sam paused for a moment, considering whether it was worth continuing. “We’re so close now. Don’t you think you could… maybe be straight with me now?”

Blue eyes finally darted up from the coffee. “I’ve never lied to you, Sam.”

“I didn’t think you had,” Sam assured him, thrown, as always, by the almost uncomfortable sincerity in the other man’s face. “But… Cas, you’ve got to know, when you came to me with the proposal for this expedition… obviously I was going to look into you. You turned up out of the blue with university funding and an armed guard ready to go into the same area my brother went missing. It was exactly what I wanted to hear – of course I thought it was too good to be true.”

Cas sat very still, but it seemed to Sam as though he was working which direction it would be most beneficial to spring off in.

“What was -”

“Cas, Dean’s still in half of your old social media pics.”

“Your job doesn’t give you clearance for internet use.”

Sam gave him a look. “Cas.” When his friend continued to say nothing, Sam cleared his throat and took his own turn staring at the cafetiere, which neither of them had pressed down yet, still. “I’m thinking that since you arranged all this, and it clearly means a lot to you… Look, me and Dean weren’t seeing much of each other before it happened. We didn’t live close, our lives kept us busy – whatever.” As Sam was speaking, he noticed that Cas’s whole frame seemed to droop, like his shoulders had just become ten times heavier. “But I knew enough. I knew that something broke his heart. I know that’s part of why he went off on that dumbass mission in the first place.”

“I didn’t know what he was planning,” Cas said, his voice even rougher than usual. “If I had, maybe -”

“Hey,” Sam said, taking a risk and reaching for Cas’s hand. “I wasn’t trying to go in for an interrogation here. Just… we’re probably the closest things we both have to knowing what we’re both going through. I mean, I know for me -” Sam huffed a laugh. “It’s taken so damn long but we’re finally close. This time tomorrow, we could get some sort of…”

“Closure.”

“I was _gonna_ say answers, but sure. Yeah.” Sam narrowed his eyes. “You really never thought he was alive, did you?”

“Hope…” Cas rubbed his hands together and shrugged. “I find it tends to make it worse.”

Sam felt his lips twitch up, though he hadn’t felt like smiling. “I guess.”

“I’m sorry I… wasn’t entirely straight with you.”

“I’m just glad you invited me along.”

Cas shrugged. “Half of it was selfish, I’ll admit. You might not have made it your profession as Dean did, but the two of you have well-earned reputations for unlikely survival.”

Sam smiled wryly and picked up the coffee press. “And the other half?”

“Dean… he would have wanted you to have that closure. You deserve it.”

“Might be closure. Or…”

“I want to believe it, Sam. I…” He choked on his words and looked back at the ground. “I want to believe he could still be out there. But I can’t.”

Sam pushed the press down. “We’re out here to find changed survivors. To study them.”

“And in the unlikely circumstance that Dean is one of them, you think that would be easier, be better, than if we find that he died?”

“I don’t know what we’ll find today. But it’s like you say. Survival’s what we’re good at.”

Cas took a quick breath in. “You didn’t see him when he left.”

Sam had nothing to say to that, and thanks to the loud screeching noise from somewhere off to their left which made them both turn their heads slowly, he didn’t have to come up with anything.

“That…”

“Sounded close.”

They nodded at each other and stood up slowly. The sun still wasn’t fully up yet. There was a lot out in the darkness that none of them wanted to see. The books had been consistently right about that part.

They moved off in opposite directions, getting their people up and moving. Usually they might happily stall to find what was approaching them – they were all well-prepared, and it could be useful research for later. But now, wordlessly, they were in agreement.

Not today.

 

*

 

Cas hadn’t been this deep into the Eastern Wilds for a very long time. It wasn’t that he was scared to venture out – thanks to a mixture of natural abilities and acquired skills there was little which could threaten him. But it made him sad, seeing the wreckage that had been made of the world

Sometimes, of course, being at home just made him feel guilty. He’d forget for a moment what life was like outside the carefully cultivated urban greenery of the compound - could almost forget that the world hadn’t ended. Of course, over this last year, those moments of forgetfulness had almost stopped entirely.

It was all too easy to dwell on the hard truths when all his mind was drawn back to was, well. Dean. Who would have been merciless in making fun of him if he’d been around to hear Cas air that thought aloud.

But Dean wasn’t around. And even if by some freakish miracle he was…

Cas wouldn’t be someone he’d want to talk to.

Nodding as Sam glanced back at him, silently motioning that they should move forwards, Cas found himself staring at the back of his head, lost in thought, as the rest of their small team moved in behind them. Sam hadn’t seemed like much of a natural leader when Cas had first met him, approaching him after one of his classes. He was certainly able to command the attention of his group of teenagers, but Cas wouldn’t have been able to imagine him leading a charge against a wall of unfamiliar monsters, even knowing he was Dean’s brother. But now he’d seen it for himself and had no more doubts. Sam was the sort of person people wanted to listen to, wanted to follow. And the reason for his drive in what he did was so clear, so _good_. His brother, the only family he’d had left, was missing, had been missing for over a year, and Sam would do whatever it took to find out what had happened to him out there.

Luckily for Cas, he hadn’t questioned too hard as to what had made him leave.

It hadn’t been an officially sanctioned mission, but with the role he had as one of the compound’s uniformed defenders, no one had questioned Dean when he left, when he’d walked out that gate alone. They had later, when a string of bodies had shown up inside the compound, all linking back evidentially to Dean’s empty sleeping quarters. People had started whispering again about the possibility of monsters hiding themselves inside the walls. Whispering very particularly that at least he’d had the good sense to end himself outside the walls before anyone had found out, that he’d had the sense to experience shame in what he was.

Sam couldn’t believe it of course. It was obvious he still carried some hope that he might find his brother alive, and that when he did, that no obstacle would be significant enough to remain in their way for him to bring him home and resume their lives.

Cas wasn’t sure what, if anything, he was hoping for himself. The Winchester brothers may have survived for years alone on the outside of the walls, but Cas knew a few more extra things about monsters and everything else out there.

It was guilt more than hope which had carried him this far. Guilt, and a lack of interest in anything waiting back home for him.

Dean, or at least the answers of what had become of him, were outside. So he’d ventured out.

A loud shaking of a bush still standing somewhere to the right of them made Sam pause, and glance back at the group. Cas watched him count their heads, their names all forming feverishly on his lips.

This time, Cas could understand Sam’s caution. Wild animals were few now, and those there were tended not to be much friendlier than the monsters.

But generally Cas had found Dean’s brother to be, as Dean had advertised him to be, a cautious character at all times. He had carefully kept his knowledge of Cas close to his chest. Dean wouldn’t have agreed to go out there with Cas at all until he’d been entirely straight with him from the start. But Sam seemed prone to keeping his own secrets and accepting of others holding closely onto their own.

He was definitely Dean’s brother. They shared – or had shared – a rather irreverent sense of humour and a passionate belief in right and wrong. Sam had just learnt to be quieter in his jokes and his feelings.

But Dean had rarely ever been capable of quiet. Almost never until –

Well, until he’d stopped talking altogether, and then he’d gone.

And Cas doubted that Sam’s personality of restraint would stretch to still treating him so well if he knew how much the fault of that rested with him.

“Wait,” Sam said, bending down. “That’s a footprint.”

Cas kept his eyes on the bush that had moved while they paused, trusting that Sam knew what he was looking for.

“It looks like they’re moving off…”

Dragging his eyes back to follow Sam, Cas started moving off again in the direction. “Was it wearing shoes?”

“What?”

“The footprint,” Cas asked again. “Did it look like it was a foot or a shoe?”

“Uh…. Shoes. Definitely shoes.”

Cas nodded and kept his eyes scanning their route ahead. He was responsible for their small team of a dozen people being out there in the first place, and now they were right in the centre of the place where Dean’s last voice message had come in from. If anything happened to any of them now, it was going to be on him. He knew that for himself he had little to fear, but the rest of them…

They were human, they were fragile.

Sam’s tracking led them towards an old church building on a hill, on the edge of what looked like the remains of a small town.

“Up there?” Kevin murmured, behind Cas.

“I don’t like it,” Rufus agreed. “Nothing good nests indoors. It’s always the more dangerous fuckers that get their paws on that kind of shelter.”

Sam stared up at the church, or chapel, really, in silence. “You’re right. Keep a perimeter outside. But it looks quiet, and it’s still daylight. I’m going in, but no one else needs to follow.”

Cas watched as Charlie heaved out a long sigh. “Sam…”

“You’re not going in alone, Sam,” Cas told him, lifting his rifle meaningfully. The man had a rather aggravating tendency towards self-sacrifice, and Cas had learned the hard way not to give him any opportunity to indulge in it.

Sam’s mouth squirmed up in a strained smile as he nodded and started walking forwards. Dutifully, the others followed, forming the suggested perimeter around the building.

The door wasn’t locked, or barred, and Cas and Sam walked into the dark chapel unhindered. The windows let in some cracks of light from them, but the stain glass had long ago been boarded up, some long-forgotten safety effort made by a previous inhabitant. Though he had not informed Sam of the particular ability, Cas was grateful that his limited night vision allowed him sight of the obstacles, or rather lack of obstacles, ahead of them. The place seemed to be empty.

But the hairs on the back of Cas’s neck would not lie still, and his nose insisted that they were not alone, so he kept his gun raised and ready.

When whatever had happened to Dean had happened he’d been entirely alone. No Cas, no Sam, no team of friends or comrades. Just himself alone with his thoughts –

Cas was jolted from his own thoughts at the strange screeching sound which was cried out sharply from behind the altar. Glancing at Sam, who nodded silently, they both carefully advanced towards where the noise had come from. Then, as one, they looked over the altar.

It was children – two of them.

Not human children. That much was obvious. The eyes shone a strange purple and their canine teeth were elongated. And then one of them – the girl, who was a little older, at maybe seven or eight – made that horrible screeching noise again.

She was answered by a much louder roar coming from the right of them.

Somehow both of them had failed to see the adult male watching them from the corner, who now advanced, claws out and eyes glowing brightly.

Of course the young had not been left alone.

“Cas…”

“I see him, Sam,” Cas said, readying his gun to fire. The man’s face, still in shadow, twitched, and Cas suspected he was ready to spring at them at any moment. He had never seen creatures like this before and had no idea how effective an attack from one of them might be.

“No, Cas – it’s _Dean_.”

Cas froze, and was seized by the strangest impulse to burst out laughing. Of course the creature in front of them couldn’t be – but he knew that jawline. The frame of the face was sallower and disguised by unfamiliar facial hair, and the nose was broken now, but those shoulders, the stance, the tilt of the head as he listened to them speak – listened but did not recognise…

“No. He -”

Sam stepped forwards slowly, loosening his grip on the gun in his hands and letting the strap around his shoulders drop it to his hip. “Dean,” He said again, his voice choking up over the name. “It’s me – it’s us – Dean, we’ve come to take you home.”

The purple light seemed to dim and for a moment Cas caught his breath – despite himself allowing hope to sweep over him, to let himself think it was a spark of recognition he saw glowing there. He had never known it to be true of any turned individual he’d found in his years of research, but surely if anyone could defy the odds, defy the science then it had to be –

When Dean lunged forwards, Cas barely had time to react.

Stupid, _stupid_ hope. It really did only make everything worse in the end.

 

*


	2. Chapter 2

“They’ll be here soon.”

“Thanks, Kevin, we get that.”

“But shouldn’t we…”

“ _Kevin_ ,” Sam forced out through gritted teeth. “Five minutes, _please_.”

From across the room where he was tightly tied up, his brother, or the monster wearing his brother’s face – it was difficult to be sure yet – stared at him in silence. But they weren’t flaring purple anymore and Sam knew that had to be a good sign.

Sam knew without checking that behind him Cas would be staring back.

After the short struggle, they’d succeeded in restraining Dean and the two seemingly feral children and backing them against the altar. Sam didn’t know what would have happened if the others hadn’t followed inside at the sound of the struggle. Certainly both he and Cas had been too stunned at Dean’s appearance to have brought him down on their. Now, whatever kind of monster he might be, Dean watched them with eyes darting around them watchfully but not fearfully, reminding Sam more than anything of a cat.

And not very much of his brother.

Tracy stalked her way up and down the aisles, looking at the dusted ceiling. “Ok. Five minutes have started. What do you want to do with them?”

“They might be here in less than five minutes.”

It was Dean speaking but it wasn’t quite Dean’s voice. It was Dean having gargled gravel and his eyes still weren’t sparking with any recognition when he looked over at Sam.

“You speak,” Cas said. It was the first thing Cas had said since Dean had moved to attack them. But Dean continued to focus his attention on Sam, barely blinking, but Sam noticed that he was tightening his grip slightly around the skinny arm of the little boy beside him.

“I can speak. You should be listening. Our people are on their way, and when they get here, you don’t want to be here.”

 _I’m your people,_ Sam wanted to yell at him, but he understood how much that wouldn’t help anything.

“Well, we’re not going anywhere,” he heard Cas say. Sam avoided the looks of the rest of his team as he put out a hand to stop Cas from moving any closer to Dean. He still wasn’t sure he understood all of Cas’s motivations for being out there, but he sensed he was about a hairsbreadth away from snapping and things were already far too tense for Sam to allow that to happen.

“He’s right,” Sam said at last. “You should all leave.”

“No one’s leaving you, Sam,” Charlie snapped.

“Some of us might,” Rufus muttered, and a few of the twitchiest of Cas’s team of biologists seemed in agreement with this.

Dean’s eyes flicked between the speakers, but he did not seem inclined to offer any more words himself. Maybe he found it difficult – it was rare that Sam had met monsters capable of speech.

“Then we take them with us,” Cas muttered.

Sam looked around the room. Of those who had joined them inside them inside and not keeping watch elsewhere, this did not seem as unpopular as his own idea had been.

And meanwhile Dean continued coolly staring him down. On either side of him, the children clutched tighter at his arms, heir faces twitching in confusion and fear. Sam doubted they could understand the words being spoken above them.

But Dean did. And for a moment back there, Sam had been almost certain that he’d hesitated before he’d sprung at him.

Sam breathed out slowly. He had to believe it. He had to believe that his brother was in there somewhere, because if not, he was putting all these people’s lives in danger for nothing. Because a pack of unknown purple-eyed monsters would be coming for them while they were still weeks of trekking away from their own compound and that was all on Sam.

“Ok. We start going back the way we came, and we take them with us. If anything comes after us we make sure we’re ready for them.”

 

*

 

No one was pleased about the arrangement. They had an ominous promise that they would be followed handing over their heads, they were fleeing home without the samples they’d be saying they’d be bringing home with them, but they were taking two very small non-verbal children and man it had taken six of them to subdue, and not without injury.

But Sam couldn’t let himself care about any of that.

He’d asked Dean to be separated from the children when they stopped. He wasn’t certain it was the right call, but he had to hope that his brother would remember something more of what they were to each other if they were alone.

He’d thought he might have to request that privacy for himself too – but not even Cas had requested to join him.

Sam was getting worried for how his friend was reacting to everything going on, but he couldn’t allow himself to dwell on that now, he reminded himself as he sat down across from where they’d tied his brother’s hands together and left him at the edge of the camp. As Sam had asked, he wasn’t currently being guarded.

It was just the two of them.

“Where are they?” Dean asked, the moment Sam sat down. It was the first thing he has said since the church.

Sam met his eyes steadily. The purple glow had faded now. “Safe. They are inside the tent, being kept warm. We found them some new clothes.”

Dean blinked slowly and again, said nothing.

“I know you’ve been listening as we’ve been marching,” Sam tried again. “Do you know who I am to you?”

Dean remained silent and continued to stare. He still didn’t seem particularly interested but he was definitely paying attention.

“I’m your brother, Dean. Dean. That’s your name.”

“That sounds right.”

“What?”

“Well,” Dean continued, in that aggravating voice of reason. “I knew that you seemed familiar to me, and that I didn’t want to harm you. So, family. That sounds right.”

He said nothing about the name.

“So… you don’t remember.” Sam wasn’t sure if he was disappointed or relieved. It would probably feel worse to know that Dean knew who he was but had still tried to attack him, surely.

“Sam – that’s what they call you? I have family, of my own kind. And they need me. You don’t.”

The coldness in his voice…

“You’re wrong,” Sam said, feeling tears prick at his eyes. “I do need you. That’s why we’re out here.”

Dean tilted his head to one side. “No… you don’t. But I guess it is nice to know that I was missed. But now you need to let me go. Or it’s about to get you all killed.”

Feeling something like rage broiling up, Sam got back on his feet and was about to start walking away when he decided to hold his ground instead.

“Your name is Dean Winchester. You are four years older than me, and when you were – when you were little, you wanted to be just like our Dad. You loved old cowboy films and bad slasher movies, but if the TV was left on you’d usually rather watch soap operas. When our parents died and we moved in with our Uncle Bobby you sorta stopped talking to me, tried acting tough all the time. Then you bet me a whole bag of marshmallows that I wouldn’t be able to jump from the roof of Bobby’s old truck down into the broken open-top corvette that you’d pushed over next to it. I broke three ribs and dislocated my collarbone. And then when I woke up the next day you’d been crying and you said -”

Sam curled the hand that he had been waving around to make a point into a fist and wondered why he was still talking. “You told me that you’d never let me down like that again. And you never did. When the world ended and we lost Bobby and we spent so much time if we might be the only ones left out there, we never would have made it if it wasn’t for you. You saved me over and over - ”

Afraid of what he’d see, Sam forced himself to look down. But against all his hopes there was no compassion, no recognition showing on Dean’s face when he sat up a little straighter and told Sam, “I think you should stop trying to save me.”

Sam shook his head, feeling seconds away from bawling like a small child. “The others. Your new family.”

Dean tensed.

“Do they remember? Do they talk about where they come from.”

“We don’t talk much. Some of us do, some of us don’t. Some of us weren’t born lost at all.”

 _Born lost._ There was such an odd tone in Dean’s voice as he said those words… If he didn’t remember his old life at all then why did it sound like there was so much hard feelings buried there?

 

*

 

Cas was almost ready for sleep when Sam came and found him. Almost, because although he was in clothes he was happy to sleep in and his bedroll was ready and had even had been offered a space in the tent, he wasn’t even remotely tired yet.

Every time he paused in anything he was concentrating on, no matter where he was in the camp, he felt Dean’s cold eyes staring at him, could see them whenever he closed his own. People seemed to sense his mind was elsewhere, or they were quietly pitying him for the pain they perceived he was going through for reasons few of them knew anything about.

Or they had been trying to speak to him and he’d simply been too consumed by his own thoughts to notice. It certainly took Sam several attempts to get his attention.

“ _Cas._ ”

Cas shook his head and sat down in front of Sam by the end of the fire. “I’m sorry, Sam. It’s -” He raised a limp hand which he quickly let fall back on his lap.

“It’s been a strange day,” Sam finished for him. But nothing in his tone suggested he was letting Cas off easy. He almost seemed to vibrate with nervous energy.

“I spoke with him.”

“And?”

Sam exhaled. “I don’t think he wants to remember. And since he’s prepared to admit that he almost remembers me I don’t think that’s going to be about any baggage that I know anything about.”

Cas froze. “Sam…”

“It’s too much to ask, I know. But you said you wish you could’ve stopped him leaving. So, stop him slipping away from us, please.”

“I - ”Cas twisted his fingers together. “I can’t do it, Sam. I can’t even look at him.”

Sam crouched to get down to Cas’s eye level as he might for encouraging a child. “Yes, you can,” he said, not raising his voice but somehow increasing the intensity behind it. “Because I think you owe him this much.”

And Cas had nothing to say which could possibly argue against that.

 

*

 

Dean wasn’t asleep. Cas hadn’t exactly been hoping he would be, but it was difficult walking up towards him and seeing those purple eyes guiding him in like tiny twin lighthouses. Sam had told him the eyes had dimmed back to their natural colour, but apparently that hadn’t lasted.

“Hello,” Cas said, as he stopped walking. The camp was quiet now, bar the occasional cough, and though Cas knew they were surrounded by his sleeping team and being guarded by three staying up to keep watch, they could have been alone out there.

Dean tilted his head to one side. “Have you come to give me a speech too?”

“What?”

“The other one. He gave me a speech, about why I should remember my lost days. Are you planning on doing the same? Because all it’s going to do is waste time you should have been spending running. When my family catch up to us, and they find you?” Dean smiled, his elongated canines flashing brightly in the dim light.

“Would it work?”

“No.”

“Ok then.”

It was difficult to make out his expression, but it seemed like Dean might be feeling uncomfortable. “Then how come you’re here? We knew each other, right?”

“We did.” Cas sat down on his coat, barely bothering to keep himself dry. “Sam thinks I should speak to you. But I’m  -”

“Not optimistic you’ll live that long? Smart.”

“That too. No. I’m a coward. I don’t know if I want you to remember.”

Dean didn’t seem to have a reply to that.

“But I’d like to know… are you happy?”

“What?”

“With your family. Out here in the wilderness. Are you happy?”

“I’d be happier out of these ropes.”

“That’s what I was trying to ask.”

Dean frowned. “You’d let me go?”

“I’m thinking about it,” Cas admitted, realising that he was being honest.

“The kids too?”

“Of course.” Why not?

Dean narrowed his eyes. “Why?”

“Because I wanted to find what happened to you. And now I know. And I think that despite everything, you might be happier out here than you would be in with us. At least without your memory. And if Sam couldn’t get you to remember, then…”

“Ok. See, I thought it was because you’re not like them. Of course you’d turn on them. I just didn’t get why you’d do it for me.”

Cas slowed his breathing.

“Let me guess. Old me didn’t know what you are.”

“No, you didn’t.”

“New me isn’t sure either. I’ve met a whole bunch of different creatures, but I’ve never seen anything like you. You smell… _wrong_.”

“I’ve never seen anything like you.”

“Damn right you’ve not,” Dean muttered, almost sounding like himself for a moment. “But my people don’t live inside the walls.”

It stung more than it had a right to, hearing Dean talk about other creatures like they were the only love he’d ever known, like they’d always been his to defend. “When did they find you?”

“It’s been a few seasons,” Dean said cautiously. “Have you got enough comfort that I’m happy yet? Can I leave?”

Cas said nothing. Sam would never forgive him. He would probably never forgive himself. But he didn’t know that it would be any easier on either of them if they took Dean back with them now. And he’d always found it near impossible to deny Dean anything he asked for – which was becoming now all the harder again now that his eyes seemed to be fading back to their natural green.

He’d done a lot of things for those eyes.

But not, in the end, enough.

“I can see you care,” Dean pressed on, almost sounding sympathetic now, though Cas suspected it was an act. “But why do you feel so _responsible_? What went and made me yours?”

It felt good even to hear this level of curiosity return to Dean’s voice. It made answering easier.

“Because I’m the reason you left.”

“What, like you kicked me out?”

“No.” Cas looked down at his hands. “You told me you loved me. And I told you… that I didn’t feel the same.”

Dean stiffened, and seemed to pull further away.

“But I was lying. I did love you then. Just like I love you now. And like I always will. I don’t think I get a choice in that. So. You deserved to hear that from me. Even if you don’t care. Even if you don’t remember who I am. You deserved to know.”

Unnervingly, Dean hadn’t look away from him. “How do you know?”

“What?”

“You said that you’ll always love me. How do you know that? You don’t even know if I’m the same person. And believe me, if you were a little more human I’d be wanting to eat the flesh off your bones right now. So why love?”

“Because…” Cas looked away, back to the warm glow from the camp and realised that he was fighting off tears. Dean was right: he was a monster who had no memory of who he was. But he protected those children like his own. And he acted like he was in control of the conversation even though he’d been tied up. He was still talking like he expected his new “family” to show up at any moment, though it had been over half a day with no sign of them: he still had too much faith in the ones he loved.

He was still himself, even if he didn’t know it. Still, underneath, the same Dean whose face lit up like a beacon when something good happened to him, the same Dean who’d once made Cas watch interminable days worth of old cowboy movies, the same Dean who worried about how well his brother was adjusting, who made jokes when he was in pain.

How could Cas not keep loving that?

“Because…” Cas forced a strange smile. “I’m your huckleberry.”

He continued to look down at the camp, stating to think now that Dean had gone quiet. It could be disastrous to let Dean free before he had the children with them, but it would be difficult to get to them on his own. They were asleep, they wouldn’t understand him, and they were currently the best guarded thing in the camp, right at the centre. It was Garth and Rufus on guard there – Cas suspected that he could convince the former to let him take over, maybe, but Rufus…

“Cas?”

Cas flinched, and despite the fear h had in looking round, he turned immediately. Dean’s voice had changed again.

And he’d called him by name.

Even in the low light, Cas could see the tears in Dean’s eyes, but he didn’t seem to be aware of them himself, and just let them fall down his face slowly. Not, of course, that he had hands free to wipe them away. “I… I remember.”

It could be an act, but Cas didn’t even have the energy left in him to consider it. “Dean,” he said simply, reaching out awkwardly with both hands to rub them over Dean’s arms. And he noticed that Dean’s expression was far less relieved than he would have hoped. He seemed almost fearful.

“What _are_ you, Cas?”

Cas felt his throat dry.

“Are you married yet?”

*


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> so there was going to be one long flashback-context chapter here but i think i'm splitting it because it kept getting wayyy longer than planned

Three years before the end of everything arrived, Dean went to college.

Bobby had pushed him into it. He’d been happy enough working Bobby’s autoshop with him and letting Sam be the one to bury himself in books, but apparently he shouldn’t be “wasting his potential”. Dean always suspected Bobby just wanted him to get out of the house, out of his liquor cabinet and meeting more people his own age more than he had any faith in Dean’s academic abilities. But he went. Learned something more about mechanics, took a few courses on astronomy, and ended up enjoying the whole experience about ten times more than he’d thought he would.

Mostly because the guy who sat next to him in astronomy had a dumb-ass three syllable name, a painfully dry sense of humour and a head of hair that always made him look like he’d just rolled out of someone else’s bed.

Dean had always made friends easily and kept a decent amount. Cas was the first he’d ever describe as a _best_ friend, even if he still wasn’t corny enough to go saying something like that out loud, and since neither at the time had a truckload of other friends to be calling on they spent a lot of time together. Studying. Drinking out of the same glass. Passing back and forth the weird old bong Dean had uncovered in Bobby’s attic as a teenager. Sitting on the roof of Dean’s car watching the stars and making up new names for them.

And then one night Dean thought he messed it up forever when he went in for a kiss and didn’t find Cas leaning in to that empty space to meet him there. He’d swallowed and pulled back, meeting his friend’s equally uneasy gaze. God, his friend, who he’d now fucked things up with because he was drunk and couldn’t keep it in his pants –

He’d fled.

But later that night, in the rain, because of course it had been raining, Cas arrived at Bobby’s door. And this time neither of them hesitated.

The rest of that term was filled with the hardest academic challenges of Dean’s life, but the stress didn’t even touch him. It was glorious weather, he was good at what he was doing, and he was in love with his best friend. He hadn’t told him that yet – he wasn’t a complete dumbass – but everyone else noticed. Bobby told him he was smiling too damn much. Sam skyped home and asked what gotten into him lately. And Dean never said anything, even if it was all he was able to think about. That was a whole load of difficult conversations he probably wasn’t ready for yet. But when Cas left for the summer – to go home to the family Dean had still never met any of – Dean promised himself that he’d be ready to talk to his family, to Cas.

But then, of course, the world had to go and end. Not with a bang, but with… several bangs. Or, several disasters that at first seemed tragic, and big news, in a far-off kind of a way, but ultimately pretty unrelated. Tsunamis, earthquakes, freak lightening storms. Then weirder shit. Satellites suffering technical failures, illnesses flooding hospitals. And stories started coming in about people _changing_. Monster sightings went from fringe internet blogs to national news almost overnight.

Countries started blaming each other. Conspiracists blamed aliens. A lot of religious types blamed God.

And then, a lot faster than the scientists had thought they should be, climates started changing.

North Dakota started seeing dust clouds around the time Bobby had them barricade the door and they stopped hearing anything. He was no conspiracy nut but he wasn’t the type to rule anything out and they’d all seen a lot of disaster movies. As Bobby put it, things were almost definitely about to get worse before they got better. Dean agreed, but he’d been hoping no one would actually say it.

With Sam at home, and Bobby’s back still giving him troubles, Dean had never been so grateful they lived outside of town. Even with the phones down, the last news coming through telling them about monsters, about parts of the world on fire, about how attempts at military takeovers were all ending badly, it was easy to pretend that this was something temporary, something for the summer, to be a story for Cas when he came back.  Dean made jokes and use of the hunting skills Bobby had trained them in as newly orphaned idiot boys and he scripted together what he was going to tell Cas whenever he got to see him again.

He wasn’t going to be playing any kind of long game anymore, oh no. He was going to kiss the grumpy bastard full on the mouth the minute he saw him, he was going to introduce him to his family as his boyfriend and he was going to tell him that he loved him.

It was going to be a big, overbudgeted, dumbass movie moment, just like their first kiss in the rain. But not raining. And with music swelling behind them. Like John Williams style triumphant levels.

In no part of this fantasy did Dean think about what Cas had been through. Cas was exactly as he had been, and despite living in the middle of a city, he’d somehow escaped seeing and experiencing any and every horror out there.

He was going to be _safe_.

Bobby was the one who suggested they leave in the end, and that put an end to the fantasy someone was going to arrive and find them. His home was still well stocked, with a generator that wouldn’t be going out any time soon, but Bobby was insistent, and so, when he came around to the idea, was Sam. They couldn’t just sit there wasting away, wondering what was happening to the rest of the world.

Privately, Dean thought that was absolutely what they could do. No one had to get hurt, and whenever it all blew over, Cas could come back and find him. The moment they went out there he knew it was all going to be real, and he was going to be surrounded by real people he wouldn’t be able to help.

He’d had no idea how right he was.

Later, Dean liked to pretend when people asked him about it that he could barely remember that time in his life, that it had all merged together in an endlessly traumatic nightmare. The important part was that they survived.

But the truth was that he remembered all of it. He remembered the sinking lurching feeling in his gut the first time the truck ran out of gas. He remembered getting to the end of a day of going hungry and knowing he was going to be hungry tomorrow again. He remembered feeling like a coward when Sam started talking one night about his college girlfriend and Dean didn’t mention anyone he was hoping to find. He remembered passing through towns he could remember driving through and finding nothing alive but feral dogs. And then Bobby going out with his shotgun and announcing they were having a dog’s dinner that night. He remembered getting handy with a liberated sewing kit fast, and never missing the internet so much as he did whenever he came across a berry and wasn’t able to google it.

He remembered the look in Bobby’s eyes when he’d accepted that his wounds from the monsters they’d narrowly slipped away from were about to be the death of him.

Because they were finding monsters. Mutated people, mostly unable or unwilling to talk, sometimes hunting alone, sometimes as a pack. Some looking like pretty traditional werewolves or known cryptids, but mostly they looked human. Apart from eyes, or teeth, or sometimes an extra limb. It varied constantly.

Mindless hunger was the one commonality.

Dean made himself believe that this was all like some dumbass zombie flick and that none of them remembered who they used to be anymore. Because otherwise that would make him a mass-murderer. He might be alone with only his brother with no Bobby, no Cas, no land he recognised, but he had to believe he was still something like a good guy.

He also remembered that sometimes life almost turned out to be fun.

Bobby and possibly the whole rest of the world might be dead or worse, but somehow he and his brother were still kicking, and they didn’t need to worry about tax, or student debt, or what they looked like in the morning or any other dumb petty shit that had ever stressed them out. And after they’d gotten good at staying alive, and they did get terrifyingly good at it, it was sort of like one long surreal camping trip. One afternoon fishing turned into a swimming excursion when Sam lost his footing. They spent a whole week in an abandoned mansion, which, incredibly, still had hot water. Dean made them laugh until they both cried when he found a wardrobe full of perfectly preserved wigs and proceeded to try them all on one by one, creating a new persona for each one. It was so much easier to keep smiling and acting brave when his little brother was there every morning needing to see him smile. Things had to be alright so that he could convince Sam that things were alright.

And then after years of clinging on to survival enough to meet the next smoggy sunrise, they found people. Other living, breathing, _human_ people.

Dean cried, openly, at the sight of the compound with its guarded high walls, its electric lights, at the moving silhouettes behind those windows.

They weren’t alone. And maybe humanity wasn’t all doomed. Maybe there were even people with _answers_ in there, something that Dean had long assumed he’d stopped caring about.

It took some persuading to get themselves let in _. That_ part was a blur. Because then they were separated, proclaimed malnourished and tested for every fucking disease the medical people had the resources left to test for. And between speaking to real actual people who weren’t all that keen on speaking back or humouring his bad jokes, sleeping on an actual real mattress and worrying about where they’d taken Sam, and what he’d do if they decided that only one of them was allowed in, there was a lot happening. Then someone burst in to see him, _demanding_ to be let through with a fervour which would have been heart-breaking if Dean wasn’t feeling so fucking drained.

And then Cas was there, standing over him in lab-coat and a beard, eyes wide like he was staring at a ghost.

“Hey,” Dean remembered saying.

Cas continued to say nothing.

“It’s been a minute.”

Cas cleared his throat. “A long minute.”

“Yeah.”

They didn’t kiss, not in that first hour of realising that the other one was still alive, had suffered just like they had, and that didn’t feel wrong. There wasn’t any soundtrack swelling behind them pushing them towards each other. It felt natural to keep apart. Kissing, hugging, no single gesture seemed like it would cover it anymore.

There was a lot of staring at each other at the start. It was like they’d become shy of each other, like they hadn’t been even before their first kiss, like they were afraid that the other might be too fragile to touch, or might not even be there at all.

The first night they spent together again came after Dean had been in a temporary bunk for almost a month. And at first they were so goddamn careful with each other. For the first time, at least. The rest of the night felt more like a breaking of a dam, and Dean felt more than one tear running down his cheek by the end of it, when he held Cas tightly to him and told himself he was never going to let him go again.

Cas had thought he was dead. He’d heard that nothing in Dean’s state survived the first month of sicknesses. Dean had spent enough time wandering and finding no one alive to forgive him that assumption. For his part, Dean had always done his best to do the opposite, and imagine that somehow nothing of the horror the world kept witnessing had touched Cas, that it had all slid by him. In comparison, it was almost true. Though the world outside the compound had shifted and changed immeasurably, Cas’s half-finished degree had kept him useful and safe indoors, along with his family. Dean felt the need to tell Cas everything while also keeping him protected from the worst of it – it was all starting to feel less real, now, and it felt wrong to bring that in here, into their space, where they were supposed to be safe, where they were finally allowed to be _happy_.

It was the strangest time. On the one hand, Dean had probably never been so happy. But on the other hand, trauma was a bitch, and tended to hit hardest when you finally gave yourself the space and time to process it. It turned out that Dean had done and seen a fucktonne of things over the last few years which was enough to give anyone trauma, so he tried his best not to leave himself any time.

Cas lived with his sister, and after Sam decided to take up a teaching position on the other side of the strange army town compound thing they now found themselves in, Dean was living alone, and that was terrifying after years of only knowing everything was ok if he could hear his brother breathing beside him. He could hear other people breathing, and snoring, the barracks weren’t some kind of paradise, but it wasn’t the same.

That made for an easy excuse not to tell Sam about Cas, about the joy that had brought him. That did feel kind of wrong. But after so long sharing _everything_ it was nice having something like a secret that just belonged to him. Something good that was _his_.

And besides, Cas didn’t seem all that into public displays these days, and Dean was fine with that. Through the days he put himself back into danger because that was where he felt most comfortable these days, and during the nights, he’d usually get Cas to himself.

They had time to sort the rest out later.


End file.
